"Hey, Contra, Why do we eat humans?" The powerful bill clamped shut, slicing through soft flesh and brittle bone with a wet crunch. A crimson wave splattered out from the crushed limb and splashed onto her semi-transparent quills, thick scarlet droplets dribbling down to the cold floor. She arched her neck back, tugging at the limb still tethered by stubborn sinew until the last strand gave way with a sickening snap. She took a delightful gulp and swallowed the limb whole.
She was a large mokoi, towering at least two heads above the human she was currently devouring. Her long, flat, transparent bill acted as a grotesque window into the crushed and pulpy remains of her meal, every chew turning flesh and bone into a glistening slurry. The bill tapered into a small, round face with great, big, beady eyes, an almost comical contrast to the rest of her imposing form.
Her body was heavy and bulbous, draped in semi-transparent, hollow quills that revealed the poised poison hidden within. Like her bill, her tail was long and flat, but unlike the transparent viewing port of her bill, the tail was made of powerful muscles wrapped in slick, oily leather—a perfect adaptation for swimming, though there was not much swimming to be found in these caves. She sat comfortably on her broad haunches, her stumpy hind legs curled up in front of her, perfectly at ease as she feasted.
"I don't know, Pinna. Because they taste good?" Contra offered back dismissively.
Pinna's companion was a thinner, more humanoid mokoi, lounging lazily against a damp stalagmite. His long, pointed ears twitched slightly, and a constant deluge of slime oozed from his smooth skin.
With a bored expression, Contra lethargically tossed a squishy eyeball into the air, aiming to catch it in his mouth. The eye plummeted, but his timing was off—his head tilted awkwardly, his mouth just a fraction too slow. The eyeball smacked against his lower lip, then bounced to the floor, rolling to a dusty stop. Contra grimaced at it; his appetite soured.
"I guess. We don't eat other mokoi, though." Pinna muttered, pulling the corpse closer and rifling through the human's belongings.
"Sounds about right to me. People tend to avoid eating friends," Contra replied, entirely indifferent to his friend's existential querying.
He scooped the eye off the ground, battling between his propriety and his gluttony before the obvious won out, and he wiped the dust off and tossed the eye into the air again. This time, his aim was true. The squishy orb landed in his mouth with a satisfying snap, and he crunched down, savouring the juicy treat with a contented smile.
Pinna tore open the dead human's pack, then hoisted the corpse into the air and gave it a few firm shakes until its contents spilled onto the cave floor.
As Pinna perused the assorted contents, she asked out, "Can humans not be our friends?"
Mixed in with the tools and medical supplies on the ground was a small sack, which Pinna used her sharp claws to slice open with ease. She was pleasantly surprised to find another one of those packed meals inside. She loved it when the humans brought those down.
Contra let out a short, uncontrolled laugh—something between a snort and a cackle. "Pfft, yeah, mokoi can befriend humans. And the devadoots are real gods."
Pinna gave her companion a disapproving scowl. "I'm being serious. Why not?"
"Well, for starters, there's the whole eating them thing." Contra plucked another eye from a nearby corpse, flicked it into the air, and caught it effortlessly in his mouth.
"That's a begging-the-question fallacy though." Pinna countered. "We aren't friends with humans because we eat them, but we eat them because they're not our friends."
Pinna finished eating the human's meal and licked the last traces of succulent jam from her lips, savouring the lingering sweetness, then returned to sifting through her victim's belongings, searching for anything else of interest.
"I'm begging your pardon?" Contra paused mid-snack, casting a disconcerted look at his companion.
"Begging-the-question," Pinna clarified. "It's a logical fallacy where the conclusion is reliant on the statement for its proof. It means that what you said doesn't make any sense."
As she lectured her friend, Pinna plucked a small booklet from the pile of goods, her large claws struggling to pry it open.
Meanwhile, Contra resumed scouring for the more delectable bits of human flesh. "Well, either way, there is a simple solution to that problem."
Pinna paused, her attention shifting fully to him. "What's that?"
Contra smirked. "Just don't eat them."
Pinna jolted upright in shock. "Woah, let's not jump to anything drastic here!"
Contra threw up his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, no need to go off on me! I was just trying to give you advice. You're the one who wants to befriend the humans."
Pinna huffed and plopped back down, redoubling her efforts to pry open the booklet. "I don't want to be their friend per se—I just don't understand why it's not an option."
"They literally think of us as inferior beings."
"We think the same thing."
Pinna finally gave up on her claws, clamped her jaws around the book cover, and peeled it open with her mouth, finally revealing the first page of its contents.
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Having taken all the best cuts from the nearest corpse, Contra reached for the next one—only to find it just out of reach. Too lazy to sit up or even extend his arms, he opted for a different approach, prodding at the body with his foot in hopes of dragging it closer."Yeah, but we're right."
"I know that," Pinna said, her focus still on the booklet. "But the humans probably see it in the exact opposite way. Regardless, the point is moot. Just because they're inferior doesn't inherently negate their capability of being friendly. Both humans and mokoi have pets, and we consider them inferior."
As if on cue, the booklet slipped from her claws, flopping shut the moment it hit the cave floor. Pinna let out a long sigh, her quills twitching in frustration.
"You want a pet human?"
"I'm not opposed to the idea." Pinna gave up on the book, tossing it back into the pile of trinkets and then resumed her search for anything more interesting.
"Can you get them declawed?"
With some extra effort, Contra finally managed to hook his foot around a nearby corpse and drag it within reach. He pulled it closer, then nonchalantly plucked out the eyes—those were always the best part.
Pinna browsed through the options of human-brought objects, her claws skimming over an assortment of odd trinkets until she came across a peculiar piece of cloth. The cloth was vaguely in the shape of an isosceles triangle, the one odd end of which being much longer than the other two. Each face of the triangle had a large opening as if two identical triangles were sewn together at their edges. The purpose of the strange fabric eluded her, but something about it fascinated her.
"Humans don't have claws."
Contra tiredly rolled his eyes, both figuratively and literally, as for purely internal comedy; he also rolled the plucked human eyes in his palm, joyfully thinking to himself about how he was rolling 'his eyes.' "I know that obviously. I was just using barbarism. I thought you would catch on, being such a high-and-mighty philanthroper. I just meant that humans can be pretty dangerous creatures. Or did you forget that they killed our Khan?"
Pinna continued examining the strange triangular cloth. The cloth seemed similar in fabric to what most humans wore under their armour, so she reasoned it must be some kind of garment.
"That was only one human. You can't judge an entire species because of one bad egg. Also, it's a philosopher, not a philanthroper. And philanthroper isn't even a word, it would be philanthropist… which I definitely am not by the way."
Contra dropped the severed human eyes, his mouth falling open in utter disbelief.
"Pinna! You cannot be serious. First of all, there were five humans, not one. And even if it was just the one, they literally call him a hero. He is single-handedly praised as the greatest human ever, specifically because he is so good at killing mokoi! I think I am well within my rights to think I can judge all of humanity based on this quote-unquote hero's behaviour." He dramatically waggled his fingers in the air for emphasis, even if Pinna was too engrossed in the cloth to notice.
Pinna remained far calmer than her compatriot, being more interested in this strange cloth than in their conversation. Pinna grabbed the strange cloth and inserted her head into the larger hole while using the two smaller ones as eyeholes: it was a mask!
"So, they've developed a fairly negative stigma against the mokoi." she mused, voice muffled slightly by the fabric. "It's a consequence of an over-enflamed zeitgeist built on an extinct conflict."
Contra blinked a few times. "Do you just like using big words?"
This time, Pinna rolled her eyes. "We had a war. Obviously, there is a lot of bad blood. But does that mean we have to maintain that bitterness forever? Is it not possible that we could work toward changing how we perceive each other? Maybe even—" She gestured grandly with her claws "—see some form of peace over the horizon in our future?"
Contra reeled back as if she had physically struck him, his whole body recoiling from the sheer absurdity of the comment. He glanced around wildly as if searching for someone—anyone—who could confirm that he wasn't the insane one here.
"I can't believe this. You actually are one of those pro-humanist new-age mokoi. Is that why you came to the Dungeon of Ingress? Not to escape the badlands but to actually get closer to the humans!" He gasped. "No. No, it can't be. You weren't always this much of an extremist—" Realization struck, and his eyes narrowed. "This is because you've been reading those awful human August Chichi books, isn't it?"
Pinna's attention snapped away from the mask, her face contorting in anger. She tried to snarl through her bill, but her vocal anatomy betrayed her, producing something closer to an aggressive purr. "August Chichi is an artist who transcends the races!" she declared, quills bristling. "You know he even made mokoi art, too."
"At knifepoint." Contra huffed, folding his arms.
Pinna ignored the jab, her voice taking on an almost reverent tone. "And even in spite of his tragic life, he still believed in the possibility of a loving harmony between humans and mokoi—all the way to the end."
"But there was an end." Contra spat onto the cave floor, his corrosive saliva hissing as it ate into the stone, leaving behind a small, bubbling pit of acid. "Empty words of a painter. He literally killed himself because he was living with some mokoi. If you ask me, that doesn't sound very friendly to our kind."
Pinna lifted her head high, puffing up with haughty indignation. "He wasn't just a painter—he was a philosopher, like me! And he didn't kill himself because of some stupid racism. Plus, he wasn't simply living with the Pleurothallidinae; they held him in captivity. Even then, that wasn't why he killed himself. Just like all great artists, he had a tormented soul. Those who see the brightest beauty life offers are also cursed to see life's darkest depths."
Contra stared at her, the tension in his posture slowly melting away under the sheer force of her childlike enthusiasm for her self-proclaimed philosopher status.
He sighed. "You shouldn't glorify suicide like that…" his eyes narrowed, finally registering her bizarre attire, "and why are you wearing human underwear on your head?"
Pinna's face scrunched up in confused contemplation as she mulled over her companion's words. Then, in a sudden bout of understanding, she vigorously shook her head, swiping the undergarment off her head.
"Oh, ew!" She grimaced, sticking out her tongue in disgust, prompting a hearty laugh from her mokoi companion.
"Well, Pinna, I guess we'll just have to hope that your ideals can bear fruit in others." Contra said with a sigh of defeat, slumping deeper against his stalagmite, "We'll all need to start getting chummy with humans whether we like it or not soon since there is no turning back now."
Pinna's grimace made way to skeptical interest. "So it is true then, the Immersion is actually gone?"
Contra nodded in affirmation. "Yep, apparently, the Immersion has actually been gone for quite a while."
"How could no one have noticed?"
"Mokoi that come to the dungeon tend to not have much reason to turn back and return."
Pinna nodded, understanding. "Fair enough, is the civil war still going strong over there?"
"Impossible to know now. Without the Immersion, there aren't any immigrants to give us updates. But it's a pretty fair guess to just say yes."
"I hope my mom is okay." The two of them lapsed into a sombre silence, allowing some stillness for their melancholy.